


Take It as a Compliment

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-27 03:10:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18295640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Miller tells her that she flirts like a twelve-year-old: levying insults about Bellamy's pool game, then swiftly running away. But Miller doesn't know shit about flirting.Or: Bellarke + Gorgeous by Taylor Swift





	Take It as a Compliment

**Author's Note:**

> This is a BFF Writing Team Fill for the prompt "Something based off Taylor Swift's song "Gorgeous"?" requested by we-are--groot.

After her third surreptitious glance to the left, Clarke reaches her conclusion: the guy at the next table over is staring at her. Or possibly at Miller. But probably at her. It's hard to tell in the low light of the bar, plus he's obviously trying to be subtle, but she knows what's going on. She’s observant. She can tell. 

She looks at him again out of the corner of her eye. 

This guy is so _dumb_. Broad-shouldered and just utterly stupid. Beautiful, in that strong-arms, golden-skin, might-as-well-be-a-fucking-model kind of way, and slightly familiar, though she’s not sure from where, but also, beyond all that, utterly _infuriating_ , in the way that good-looking people always are. He’s going to keep on staring, and she’s going to keep on thinking about him, wondering about him, constructing fantasies about him, long after he’s left. He’s going to be the human equivalent of a song stuck in her head. 

"Hey," she says, turning back to Miller with a calculated and obviously casual air, as if this thought had just occurred: "Do we know that guy?" She shrugs with her left shoulder in the vague direction of his table, then, as if to hide the movement, picks up her drink and takes a sip. 

She asks because Miller knows everybody, and more importantly, he knows just _how_ everybody knows everybody _else_. This is a useful skill in times like these. 

"That guy?" he echoes, now, and looks to his right. Unlike Clarke, he makes no effort to be subtle. His drink is crowded with ice cubes, and they clink against the sides of his glass as he twirls his straw in a wide circle, thinking. "Oh, yeah. Sure. That's Bellamy." 

"Bellamy,” Clarke repeats. She tries to sound thoughtful, lightly curious, judgmental but in a subtle, understated way. “Sounds kind of familiar." 

"Yeah. Raven hooked up with his sister for a hot minute, last year. And now she's dating Gina, who is Bellamy's ex. Also, he's in the same grad school as Monty. Different programs. Oh—" He snaps his fingers, then points at Clarke, alight with a sudden realization—"You know when we met him? Monty and Jasper's New Year's Eve party, last month." 

Clarke does remember, quite suddenly and fiercely, like a bright flash of light: a vision of the crowd in the living room, the rhythmic chant of the countdown as they watched the ball drop on the tv, and the loud shouts and hoorahs and noisemaker blares at midnight. Bellamy clapping along with the others. She thinks they might have talked a bit before that. She cannot remember in the slightest about what. 

"Technically," she answers, shifting against the heat-sticky cushion of the booth, "New Year's Eve was _two_ months ago." 

Miller rolls his eyes. " _Technically_ ," he counters, with mocking emphasis, "it was six weeks ago. And the party ended in January, which was _last_ month. Don't play this game with me when you're drunk, Griffin. I will win." 

Clarke scoffs. "I am not drunk," she answers. 

Her screwdriver tastes like orange juice, set on fire. 

"Sure," Miller says, slowly nodding. “I’m convinced.” 

At the next table over, Bellamy is leaning his head on his hand, pretending to glance around the room, coming always, at the end of his rounds, back to her. 

* 

By the time her drink is finished, Clarke has catalogued sixteen specific Bellamy attributes that are just a little too cool, including the deep timbre of his voice as she remembers it from New Year's; the precise angles of his body as he leans back in his chair, one leg out in front of him; and the lazy roll of his eyes when his friend, at the same table, tells what Clarke can only assume is a very stupid joke. She didn't see Bellamy kiss anyone at the party, at midnight, which is too bad. If he had a girlfriend, Clarke could sublimate this irritating, itching longing with a high flight of petty jealousy. She could stop turning over the question in her head: is she cool enough, herself, for him? 

Bellamy and his friend leave their table, possibly for the bar, or the door, and Clarke excuses herself for the restroom. 

On her way back, she finds him again, just a glimpse of him through an arched doorway, setting up a game of pool. She considers returning to her booth, which would be the logical but cowardly thing to do, then immediately throws that notion away. 

Up close, she recognizes Bellamy's friend as he stands at the corner of the pool table, leaning on his cue and watching as Bellamy racks the balls. He was also at the party: Murphy, Comma, John, memorable because he had a black eye that night and told at least four different stories as to how he came upon it, and because of a vague rumor, which Clarke does not believe, that he was an arsonist in his youth. The skin around his eye is still noticeably yellow, even in the uneven light from the lamps above the pool tables, and when he sees Clarke walking over, he smiles. She can't be sure if he recognizes her or not. 

"Hey," he says, and Bellamy, finally finished with his task, looks up. 

"Hey, Murphy," Clarke answers. Then a nod to her left, and a look that lingers. "Bellamy. Mind if I join you?" 

Bellamy's eyebrows twitch up, still uncertain. Wondering if he remembers her, maybe, since she clearly remembers him. Murphy just laughs, more amused than derisive, and says, "Mystery solved. We do all know each other." 

"Yeah," Clarke reminds him, easy and a little snide, as if she hadn’t needed a reminder herself. “We met on New Year's Eve." 

“Right,” Bellamy says. “Yeah, at Monty’s party.” Instead of acknowledging her, he’d walked to the wall and grabbed two additional cues. Now he hands her one, tilting it easily, casually, into her space. His voice is as low and as stupid as Clarke remembered, and she curses herself for taking the cue without letting their fingers touch.  

"You're Clarke, right?" 

She imagines he is looking at her with a particularly meaningful intensity.  

"Hard to forget,” he’s saying. “Another gender-ambiguous name." 

_Gender-ambiguous_. So irritating. So dumb, but she also fucking loves it, and she wants to lick those words right out of his mouth. She wants to throw him down on the pool table and climb on top of him. She wants to wake up with him on Sunday morning, and study his face in the clear, early light that shines in through the white curtains of her room. 

She rolls her eyes. "Who uses words with that many syllables at this time of night?" 

Bellamy scowls, more embarrassed than angry, and Murphy answers, "That's nothing. You should hear him after a couple more drinks." 

"Shut up, Murphy. So—" He shoots the order over his shoulder, then turns back to Clarke. "Here's the real question." He tips his cue toward the table, the balls still racked up neatly at the center. "Are you any good?" 

"Am I any _good_?" She snorts. He's more beautiful up close than she’d believed he could be, but no one is stunning enough to stifle her competitive streak. "I think that's something _I_ should be asking _you_." 

Over Bellamy's shoulder, she catches Murphy rolling his eyes. He turns out to be decent himself, though not in Bellamy's league, or her own. By the time the others show up and they abandon the game, she's won once, and Bellamy once, and the third game is turning into an unbreakable tie. 

* 

Miller tells her that she flirts like a twelve-year-old: levying insults about Bellamy's pool game, then swiftly running away. But Miller doesn't know shit about flirting. He's only had two boyfriends, and the second one basically fell into his lap. Also, he misreads the situation. She is not running away to be petty or to play games, isn't running away at all: Raven, Gina, Jasper, Monty, and a handful of others arrive, the pool game breaks, the people scatter, and she ends up at a different table than before, catching up with Jasper, while Bellamy leans against a booth off to her right, talking to a girl with long, dark hair and an intricate tattoo snaking up her arm. 

Clarke cannot help the gradual shift of the night any more than she can help the gradual shift of the earth. 

She cannot help, either, how Bellamy attracts her, how she finds herself always glancing over at him, how her fingers twitch and stutter like she wants to reach for him. He's just got this _pull_. Another one of his obnoxious traits, and if he didn't want her to want to flick her tongue out across his bottom lip every time he smiles, then why does he smile so often? Why does he sometimes meet her eye, over the shoulder of the girl with the tattoo? 

Later, when she's dancing with Miller, he accuses her of schoolyard tactics and she just rolls her eyes. She does not want to explain what it is about this guy that shakes her up inside, makes her feel just like she's been picked up and tossed around and set back on her feet, her head still whirling. Miller knows how to dance about as well as Clarke does, which is to say, not very well at all. When he twirls her around one too many times—the dizzy feeling made real—she gets her bearings by focusing on a single spot on the far side of the room, returning to it again and again. To Bellamy, standing on the edge of the crowd. Not making any secret now of watching her in return. 

* 

Clarke swivels onto a barstool and orders a glass of water, which she hopes will wash away the invisible film that is separating her from nearby objects, or that it will, at least, drown the headache that is starting to form between her brows. 

She's swallowed down half of it, ice cold and sharp, when she notices Bellamy approaching. He slides onto the stool next to hers.  

"Let me guess," she says, not thinking at all about the handsome planes of his face. "You saw me out there with Miller and you're here to ask me to dance." 

"Oh, no," he laughs. "No. I'm not much of a dancer." He pantomimes a few moves, a sort of poor version of the robot, perhaps, but Clarke senses that his self-deprecation is not genuine. She thinks that if they were to dance, really dance, he might sweep her right off her feet.  

What a jerk.  

"No,” he’s saying. “I was wondering if you wanted to continue our conversation. From before—" He gestures vaguely. "Before everyone showed up.” A light roll of his eyes, and his voice drops, like this is a secret, and he leans a little closer into her space. “I think between the two of us, we know half the city." 

Clarke holds her straw still between her fingers, pressing down hard at the center of it with her nails. "Three-quarters," she corrects, low, and looks out of the corner of his eye to see if he's heard, if he's smiling. 

He is. "Three-quarters," he concedes, with a nod. 

Clarke takes another long sip of water, then folds her hands, cold from the chill sweat of the glass, between her knees. "All right. Do you remember what we were talking about?"

Bellamy pauses, mouth open, an audible, exaggerated intake of breath.  

When he exhales, the breath snaps apart into laughter. "Not a clue," he admits, and he's so cute that for a second, smiling back at him, giddy, in the moment, she understands just how _real_ he is, and how close. How his knee is touching her knee, how he is pretending not to notice.  

Without thinking, she has set her hand on the bar again, palm down, and he’s nudged up against it with his hand, and their fingers, as if of their own accord, have started to thread. 

He's watching her and he's not laughing anymore, just quiet, and waiting. She can't quite see his eyes in the bar light but she thinks they must be a deep brown, and soft, and warm, and she wishes she were sitting in his lap, or standing between his knees with his hands on her waist and his nose against her nose. But she's _not_ , and this physically hurts, like her lungs hurt after a long run, like her heart hurts after an unexpected scare. She can feel her pulse hammering against her throat. 

* 

The moment breaks, as she knew it would, and nothing happens. She curses herself for her own hesitance. But at least she understands now that the night is unfurling to its end, is over, and now it's time to go home. 

Because the city has been unseasonably warm, Clarke left her jacket back at her apartment, a decision she regrets as she pushes open the door and steps out into the brisk, clear night. She wraps her arms around herself and feels the goosebumps forming along her skin. When she exhales, she can see her own breath. Even though she's freezing, she waits a moment or two on the sidewalk, staring at the parked cars and the black squares of the windows, unlit, across the street. 

She’s still thinking about him, wishing she wasn’t, wishing she really did hate him like, for a few moments, she was able to pretend that she did. 

"Hey," a voice behind her shouts, too familiar to be frightening. She looks over her shoulder and sees him: Bellamy, standing in the door to the bar, letting out a splash of light and noise and warmth. 

"Hey," she answers, and raises one hand, curling her fingers in a wave. Because she is not at her smartest tonight, she doesn't stop herself from smiling at the sight of his face. 

"Are you okay?"  

He's shouting, which is not necessary, because outside on the street in the middle of the night, the city is as quiet as small cities ever get. He takes a step forward and lets the door close behind him, and wraps his own arms around himself. 

"I mean," he says, quieter now, "you left so fast. You didn't even take your jacket." 

Clarke turns forward again, tipping back her gaze toward the sky. She can hear him, feel him, walking up behind her, almost close enough to touch. "Would you believe I didn't bring one?" 

He snorts. "That was dumb." 

"So dumb," she agrees, unbothered. "I'm fine, Bellamy. Just calling it a night." 

"Calling it a night, getting hypothermia, whatever." His voice has a light sing-song lilt that makes her smile, as she listens to him taking off his jacket, then feels him drape it across her shoulders. 

"You don't have to do that," she reminds him, glancing over as he comes to stand by her side. Still she's gripping at the edges of it with her fingers. 

Bellamy shrugs. "Are you actually going home or are you just going to stand out here all night? Because I can call you a taxi or a Lyft or something, if you’re not up for driving—" 

"It's fine." She pulls her arms through his jacket sleeves. "Really. I live a couple blocks from here. I'm just going to walk." 

"Oh, well, in that case," he grins, "I want my jacket back." 

He holds out his hand, expectant, but Clarke rummages in her pocket, takes out her phone, and slides it into his palm instead. Her heart is hammering again, that old rhythm. Out in the world, though, under the streetlights, under the stars, she sees that he's beautiful but human; a little dorky; trying, like she's been trying, to reach this very moment all night long. 

"Give me your number and I'll get in touch with you about a return." 

Bellamy laughs, a light, almost inaudible sound under his breath. “Yeah, okay,” he mumbles, already ducking his head. “I see your master plan coming together.” His hair falls in his eyes when he looks down, typing out his name with his thumbs. 

_Bellamy Blake_ , she reads, upside down. It has a nice ring. 

"Hey, Bellamy?" she asks, bright and light-hearted, as he hands her back her phone.  

"Yeah?" 

"If you're ready to call it a night, too, would you like to stop by my place and meet my cats?" 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! You can find me on tumblr @kinetic-elaboration.


End file.
